Page 36 of Trust No One

Dev hooked his arm around hers and tugged her toward the library building. He guided her upstairs, and he didn’t even have to tell her why. It was as if they had a ‘hive brain’ thing going on.

Once on the top floor, they repeated the scan they’d done that morning. When they didn’t see any signs of the four vehicles they’d spotted earlier, or any other suspicious vehicles. Dev blew out a breath. The warm air caressed her bare arm, making her shiver.

“I think it’s safe to leave,” he said, as if he had no idea of the way his touch and his breath had affected her.

“I need to do one quick thing first,” she said, pulling out her computer and sliding into a carrel.

Ten minutes later, they walked out of the library calmly, although she kept her head moving, looking for anything out of the ordinary. When they circled back to the parking lot, their car was still there. No tickets for exceeding the two-hour limit. Their lucky day.

Chapter 13

Once they were back in their rooms, Mel opened the connecting door and knocked lightly. Dev opened it almost immediately. “What’s up?”

She jerked her head toward her room. “C’mere. And bring your computer.”

She turned around and threw herself onto the bed, pulling her computer into her lap. Dev stepped into the room a minute later. “What’s going on?” he said, studying her as he clutched his computer in one hand.

“That thing I had to do before we left the library the first time? I signed up for a VPN. A virtual private network. It’ll let us set our location anywhere in the world. Make sure no one can trace our location back to this hotel. Or the library, or anywhere else we want to get online. And no one will know who’s burrowing into CIA files.”

Dev made a scoffing sound in his mouth. “Don’t you think the CIA has protections set up for VPN’s?”

“I’m sure they do. I’m also sure they use VPNs all the time.” She smiled, pleased at her forethought. “Before I left the Kabul embassy, I got Kingsley’s email address, his login and password. He’s changed his password occasionally, but it’s never hard to figure it out. He’s lazy and uses a variation of the same letter and number combination. I’ll use that to log in, then switch to the VPN.”

Dev leaned closer, his hand tightening on his computer. “Why the hell did you go to the trouble to get his email login and password?”

“Because I didn’t trust him,” she said, shrugging. “You know what he was like. And, yeah, at first I thought he was a bureaucrat trying to throw his weight around. A low-level guy. But there was always something slippery about Cliff. Something shadowy, as if the guy I was looking at was hiding who he really was, and I was seeing only who he wanted me to see. So I made sure I got his login and password before I left. I did the same for a few other people in the agency that I didn’t trust.”

“Have you ever used them?” Dev asked.

“Not yet,” she said. “I knew they’d realize someone was cyberstalking them. They’d shut me down. And I really had no reason to check on any of them. Then Bree’s encounter with Kingsley and Larrimore at that conference changed everything.”

Dev smiled. Held up his hand for a high-five, and Mel slapped his hand. “Good work, Melbourne. You’re the smartest woman I know.That’swhy you’d think of that.”

Her cheeks turned pink, but she said, “We’ll see how smart I am when we try to get into his work computer.” She drew a deep breath. “Which we’re not going to do right now. As corrupt as Kingsley is? I’m betting he takes his laptop home every night. He keeps that baby close. So I’ll wait until two A.M. to break into his computer. Kingsley will likely be asleep, deeply enough that he won’t hear the ping of his laptop. I doubt even Kingsley is paranoid enough to take his laptop to bed with him.”

“Smartanddevious,” Dev said, sliding onto the bed next to her. “I’m on board with this. What’ll we be looking for?”

“Emails between Kingsley and the people on this list,” she said, pointing at the list of names she’d pulled up. “Besides getting the dirt on Kingsley, I want to see what he’s up to.”

“If he was making dirty deals, I doubt he was using his work email to do it,” Dev said.

“Probably not. He’d use his personal computer for that, and I don’t have his login or password for that one. But I’m guessing he had contact with at least some of these people on his work computer. The emails between them should be interesting.” She wiggled her fingers at Dev. “Give me your computer. I’ll set you up with the VPN. Then we’ll both be protected.”

Dev slid his computer over the bedspread, and Mel turned it on. Waited while it booted up, typed for a couple minutes, then slid it back to him. “Log in,” she said, looking away so she wouldn’t see his ID and password.

She heard him typing, then he said, “Done.”

When she reached to take it, Dev said, “You didn’t have to look away. I trust you, Mel. You’re not going to hack into my inbox and read my emails.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that. But what if you did something that really pissed me off? Better to take away temptation.”

One corner of his mouth curled up. “I thought I alreadydiddo something to really piss you off. But even if you did look, you wouldn’t see much besides work stuff.” As she watched, his mouth tightened and he stared at the computer. “Formerwork stuff, I guess I should say.”

She looked away, uncomfortable with the hurt and sorrow in Dev’s eyes. She began typing, ignoring the pain that stabbed her chest. She’d miss him, but she had no choice. Dev couldn’t give her what she needed, and she needed some distance from him.

In a few minutes, she handed the computer back to him. “You’re all set. All you need to do is set the country, and the VPN will route your internet connection through it.” She struggled to smile. “Before we left the library the second time, I picked France. You can use that, too, but probably better if you use a different country.”

“Why France?” he asked softly. “Is it because of that vacation we took there?”

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